MOSCOW — Russia is working to re-establish its former military bases in Vietnam and Cuba, a senior official said on Friday, reflecting Moscow’s growing ambition to reassert itself on the world stage.

The official, Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai A. Pankov, spoke at the national Parliament shortly before lawmakers voted to ratify an agreement with Syria to make the Russian military presence there permanent. [READ MORE]

The Pew Research findings released Wednesday came from a selection of questions asked to more than 3,000 Chinese people earlier this year.

China has been locked in a long-running dispute with countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia over territorial claims in the South China Sea. The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against China's claim to nearly all of the area in July. [READ MORE]

The conventional wisdom in recent years has been that the United States, reeling from loss of prestige after the Iraq invasion and awash in the foreign policy uncertainty that it created, is overextended and exhausted and now fated to watch impotently as China takes its place.

The thesis of American decline, first developed in the 1970s after the United States lost the Vietnam War, was back in vogue. America was not only fading but unable to prevent the arrival of a new Chinese superpower ready and eager to assume pre-eminence and leadership in a region dominated by the United States since the end of the Second World War. [READ MORE]

It is early days, granted, but the Philippines' crude and crass new president Rodrigo Duterte appears increasingly intent on reversing his predecessor's plucky South China Sea policy and pro-Alliance leanings, opting instead for a tilt towards China.

The Philippines' proclivity to flip-flop in its great power relations reflects various factors. One is the absence of a strategic tradition. [READ MORE]

Drawing on the history of the Cold War and the success of containment against the Soviet Union, the University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer and Harvard University’s Stephen Walt argue that the United States will have no choice but to adopt the strategy of containment against China.

Preventing the rise of a peer competitor, in Mearsheimer’s view, is a vital strategic interest. He believes it would be wise for the United States to hem in China now, while the balance of power is so greatly in America’s favor. [READ MORE]